This morning, my daily meditation made space for some thoughts to rise to the top. Just as a quick aside, I feel like when I meditate, my cleared mind removes clutter and brings uncooked thoughts or observations to the top of mind that are probably important.

While I was meditating, I felt anxiety as I started to think about quite a few people I’ve reached out to recently who never responded — people I’ve met and followed up with or sent intro emails to. I suppose the anxiety was caused by disappointment in loss opportunity that these meetings could have lead to. Also maybe a little anger at them not wanting to meet me. Now these are all initial thoughts, of course, and there are probably legitimate reasons why they didn’t respond. I started to think about following up and how effective it can be when people follow up with me when it slips my mind to respond. Very few do, and many times it actually works.

This led me to the obvious conclusion that this is something I’m sure happens to everyone. I then thought of who “everyone” includes, which would be Andy Frisella, who’s video I recently watched. Andy co-founded 1st Phorm supplements and a chain of supplement stores. So he’s a very successful self-made guy. I noticed his manner of handling himself in his videos very powerful. He was what I summarize as “Hardened & Congruent” — these traits that are very clear with all the successful people meet. Let me explain what I mean by “hardened and congruent”:

The startup road is littered with bodies of dead startups and crushed dreams. The chances of your startup making it and ever being successful are extremely low. Many of those dead bodies were perfectly capable of success, but uncontrollable changes in the markets or life in general can strike a final blow, with no warning, at any time.

Being the CEO of a startup is much like being Leonitis when he commanded his 300 Spartans to face the thousands of Persians in the narrow passage with the almost certainty of death. While this is exciting to think about, the consequences of defeat are real. Yes, it might not cost your life if your startup fails (though, sadly it could), but there is so much at stake. The physical toll and stress from the startup will definitely take years off your life.

I recently read an article by Groove’s CEO, Alex Turnbull. It resonated with me because it explained one of the scariest things for entrepreneurs – uncertainty. Insecurities can really affect an entrepreneur’s self belief which is devastating and something that’s frequently challenged with this lifestyle. His article explains a solution to uncertainty that is simple and efficient, but difficult to maintain. Here’s what he said:

Last week I decided to reach out to some big investors and tell them about my startup, PenPath. My goal was to simply just be on their radar and hopefully get some feedback. One of the emails I sent was to Mark Cuban — a very famous entrepreneur I really look up to. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any mutual contacts or context to put me in touch, but decided to reach out anyways. Getting a reply the next morning with the name “Mark Cuban” in my inbox was surreal. I had quite a few people ask what he said and others wonder how I got him to even reply after I wrote a Facebook status about it, so I decided to write this and share some tips I used while drafting the email I sent him.

Optimize Your Life

Alex Cruz

Welcome to my blog! We are living through some of the most revolutionizing times in history as technology disrupts everything in its path and paves the way for new more efficient ways to take it's place. As a founder of a software startup (PenPath.com) and consultant for companies both big and small, I share my best nuggets of information with you though my blog. I hope it helps you out. For more about me, check out the about page.
-Alex